Reuters/Yola, Nigeria

In the first attack men armed with guns and explosives killed 22 people at a busy church service in a northeast Nigerian village, witnesses said yesterday, in a region where Islamist sect Boko Haram is resisting a military crackdown.

They set off bombs and fired into the congregation in the Catholic church in Waga Chakawa village in Adamawa state on Sunday morning, before burning houses and taking residents hostage during a four-hour siege, witnesses said.

President Goodluck Jonathan is struggling to contain Boko Haram in remote rural regions in the country’s northeast corner, where the sect first launched an uprising in 2009.

The shady sect, which wants to impose sharia law on a country split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims, has killed thousands over the past four and a half years and is considered the biggest security risk in Africa’s top oil exporter and second largest economy after South Africa.

Its fighters’ favourite targets have traditionally been security forces, politicians who oppose them and Christian minorities in the largely Muslim north.

The spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Yola, reverend Father Raymond Danbouye, confirmed 22 people killed in the attack were buried at a funeral yesterday.

The military and police did not respond to requests for comment but one army source confirmed the attack, asking not to be named because he wasn’t authorised to speak with the media.

Waga Chakawa is near the border with Borno state, in which there was a separate assault yesterday by suspected members of the sect in Kawuri village, witnesses said.

Residents of that village who fled to the state capital Maiduguri said gunmen killed several people and set homes ablaze in the early morning attack. An army spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

Jonathan replaced his chiefs of defence, army, navy and air force last week in a widespread military shake-up. No reason was given for the overhaul, but security experts believe there was a need for a change of tactics in combating Boko Haram.

 Jonathan declared a state of emergency in three northeastern states in May last year and launched an intensified military campaign to try to end the insurgency.

At least forty people were killed and many wounded in an attack on a town in Nigeria’s restive northeast where Boko Haram militants operate, witnesses said yesterday. 

“We counted about 15 bodies of victims at the end of the attack,” said Fantara Madugu, who saw Sunday’s attack in the Konduga area of Borno state, 37km southeast of Maiduguri.

“We also assisted in conveying about 20 injured persons to the hospital.” 

Another witness, Isa Ibrahim, said gunmen stormed the town on four-wheel-drive vehicles, pretending to be traders who had come to do business in the market.

“Unknown to the people, the gunmen had planted improvised explosive devices at strategic areas in the town before carrying out the attack on residents,” he added.

Several houses and vehicles were set on fire before the gunmen fled, he said. 

State police confirmed the incident but could not give exact casualty figures.

“Kawuri was attacked yesterday (Sunday) resulting in several deaths and injuries,” said state police commissioner Lawan Tanko.

Neither witnesses nor police said definitively that Boko Haram carried out the attack but the incident is strongly similar to others that take place regularly in the region.